I love being Wicked... Rachel Weisz shows off her bad side as the Witch in new Wizard Of Oz movie

Being a bad, bad girl: Rachel Weisz admits she had a lot of fun playing the Wicked Witch in a new movie adaptation of The Wizard Of Oz

Rachel Weisz studied femmes fatales from the past so she could really get stuck into playing the Wicked Witch of the East in a new blockbuster movie based on the Wizard Of Oz.

The Oscar-winning actress, who is in the running for a Golden Globe for her role as an adulterous wife in The Deep Blue Sea, plays Evanora in Oz: The Great And Powerful, a big Hollywood studio fantasy movie directed by Sam Raimi, who made the three Spider-Man movies starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.

'Remember in old-fashioned black and white movies you had Barbara Stanwyck and others who played bad girls who enjoyed being bad, and had fun being bad? Well, that's Evanora,' she said with relish. 'I had a lot of fun being bad. It's all sport for her.'

In fact, looking back, Stanwyck was the cinema's number one noir bad girl.

Remember the scheming Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity?

Or the piece of work she was in The File On Thelma Jordon?

And she was evil incarnate in The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers.

Never heard of them? Then you need to stay in more. Go rent or download them - they're part of movie history.

Oh, and don't forget Jane Greer in Out Of The Past, and Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

While you're at it, screen Roman Polanski's Chinatown and take a look at how well Faye Dunaway evoked a sense of Stanwyck.

Another of my favourites is Angelica Huston in Stephen Frears's The Grifters.

Oz: The Great And Powerful also stars Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams - evil and good respectively - and James Franco.

It opens here on March 8.

In the meantime, Rachel will collect her New York Film Critics Circle best actress prize, again for The Deep Blue Sea, at a ceremony in Manhattan on Monday.

Writer Simon Beaufoy will be taking a
short break from watching actors perfect their stripping techniques at
rehearsals for the stage version of The Full Monty, for which he penned
the screen version, to scoot off to the Golden Globe awards.

Beaufoy
wrote the incredibly charming movie Salmon Fishing In The Yemen for BBC
Films, The UK Film Council and Lionsgate.

It landed three Golden Globe
nominations: one for best comedy or musical film, and one each for the
picture’s romantic leads Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt. Golden Globe
winners will be revealed in Beverly Hills on January 13.

Performances for The Full Monty begin at the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield on February 2.

My love scene: Lie back and think of Minnesota

When actress Helen Hunt gently shifts John Hawkes's body and carefully makes love to him, in their new film The Sessions, it's a moment of great beauty despite (or maybe because of) being very matter of fact, and not in the slightest bit titillating.

Hawkes, 53, gives the performance of his career portraying writer and poet Mark O'Brien.

Crippled by polio, O'Brien lived in an iron lung and would clench a pointer stick in his teeth to turn the page of a book, or dial a phone number. Sex was out of the question - or so he thought.

Gently moving: Helen Hunt and John Hawkes star in The Sessions is released in UK cinemas on January 18

But The Sessions, made by director Ben Lewin, a polio survivor himself, shows how O'Brien hired a sex therapist in Berkeley, California, to help him scratch that itch.

All Hawkes had to do was lie on his back and not move an inch 'because Mark couldn't . . . he's immobile', Hawkes told me when we met up recently in London.

'I'm usually the most co- operative of actors, but I have to be a dead weight,' he said. 'Love scenes in movies by nature are unsexy generally and awkward. There's a kind of "by the numbers" approach to them, so for this that actually worked really well,' Hawkes said.

'That awkwardness and that discomfort was what we were supposed to be feeling in the scene, and that's how it played.

'Helen did all the work. She was so brave, and didn't care. We were naked, and we didn't care.'

The movie, which opens here on January 18, works because you totally believe Hawkes is O'Brien and Huntis Greene.

The interplay between them is simple, but charged. Importantly, the film doesn't wallow in self-pity, something the director and his leading man were keen to avoid.

'Ben and I discussed the story before I'd signed on and he said he was tired of disabled people portrayed as saints and that he wanted Mark to be a bit of a s*** at times, and an asshole.

'I said let's try to see this guy try to solve his problems, as illequipped as he may be. So much more interesting than someone wallowing,' Hawkes explained.

Another factor was humour. There are scenes between O'Brien and his priest that are as refreshing as they are funny. Hawkes was raised by a lake in Minnesota, in a home where the TV had one channel. It was a carefree childhood, much of it spent outdoors: fishing, swimming and hiking.

'I was often alone and I thought of that playing Mark. His calmness came from those long walks on my own.'

When he left Minnesota he played and sang in bands and still does, mostly folk. When he started acting he 'toiled in obscurity and failed in a lot in projects people never saw'.

'I whored myself out to every trashy TV show and whatever I could in my early days, because I didn't want to be a carpenter and a waiter any more.'

His breakthrough came in Winter's Bone, opposite Jennifer Lawrence. He more than deserves one for The Sessions, too. He's already up for a Golden Globe. Steven Spielberg cast him in a small role in Lincoln and he jumped at the chance to work with Daniel Day-Lewis for a day.

'In those ten hours I didn't meet Daniel Day-Lewis, but I kind of met Abraham Lincoln. It was thrilling.'

So is John Hawkes.

West End theatre owners have been scrambling to transfer to London the big hit Crucible Theatre, Sheffield production of My Fair Lady, starring Dominic West and Carly Bawden.

Daniel Evans’s sparkling production of the legendary Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe show has been playing to packed houses and runs only till January 26.

Liz Robertson, Lerner’s widow, has visited the Crucible and liked what she saw. West, I’m told, might be available to repeat his role as Professor Henry Higgins in May for a limited London season.

For now, everything is up for discussion while availability, rights — and a theatre — are being sorted.